
BUT HERE WOMAN lAKES 
I HER PROPER PI *Ct 



CHARLES IIALSTED MAPES 




Rook >h g.c 



Copyright N°_ 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSm 



By Charles Halsted Mapes 

The Man Who One Day a Year Would 
Go " Eelin\" 

Some Other Things: But Here Woman 
Takes Her Proper Place. 



Some Other Things 

But Here Woman Takes Her 
Proper Place 



By 

Charles Halsted Mapes 

Author of 
"The Man Who One Day • Year Would Go Eelin'" 



G. p. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 
Zbc fmiclterbocfiet press 






Copyright, 1913 

BY 

CHARLES HALSTED MAPES 



Ube "Rnfcftcrbocftcr ipresa, IRew IJoirft 



O^C!,A35S?6 



MY FRIEND 

WINSTON H. HAGEN 

that man of many sides 

whose sinister suggestion started me on my mad career 

This Book is Dedicated 



INTRODUCTION 

'X'HE attitude of the Press towards my first 
* book, The Man Who One Day a Year 
Would Go Eelin\ has been so very friendly, I 
have been tempted to try again. While its 
scope was pretty broad, even going so far as 
to include under college sports a poker game 
and a couple of stories on horse racing, never- 
theless, I found after it had been issued that 
there had been two omissions, one of them, at 
least, rather curious. Baseball — and the Ladies. 
In the present collection of a dozen new 
stories and sketches, I have corrected these, 
including a story, ** A College Baseball Game 
from the Players* Bench," in which I have 
endeavored to describe "A New Angle"; 
something it is needless to say I should not 
dare to attempt with the fair sex, although 
they also now receive their full meed of 
attention. 

C. H. M. 

New York, 

December, IQI3. 



CONTENTS 



PAGE 

I. My Novel Idea 



II. A College Ball Game 

III. One Touch of Nature , 

IV. Columbia Rowing, Season of 191 i 
V. My Crowded Hour . 

VI. Alumni Reception . 

VII. My Lady's Powder Box . 

VIII. The Artistic Temperament 

IX. Annapolis Celebration . 

X. Trying It on a New Species of Dog hi 

XI. Spring Outing of the Three Societies i i 7 

XII. The Terrible Swede . . . 125 



3 
21 

44 
53 
63 
75 
83 
93 

lOI 



vu 



MY NOVEL IDEA 

A Story Without an Ending 



MY NOVEL IDEA 

A Story Without an Ending 

I DO not know what kink there is in my make- 
up, but instead of becoming normally 
and wholesomely interested in girls, I have 
always found myself meeting too attractive 
married women and indulging in vain imagin- 
ings of how very different things would have 
been had they been otherwise. Perhaps, as 
some one said of the Tribune's famous foreign 
correspondent, George W. Smalley, I was 
always strongest along the safest lines. 

Be that as it may, for years I had been going 
through various experiences of this kind, all 
of them interesting, some of them curiously 
so. Like sporting life, it might be checkered 

3 



My Novel Idea 



but was never dull. What sayeth Thomas 
Bailey Aldrich? 

In youth, forsooth, Cupid is blind, 
He loves not Woman, but Womankind. 

And by this definition I had certainly retained 
my youth in spite of steadily increasing years. 

More through good luck than good man- 
agement, no doubt, no harm ever seemed to 
come of this obviously playing with fire; in 
fact, the general result was that after my little 
affairs had run their natural course, and, for 
reasons differing in each individual case had 
come to a similar end, I found myself in 
possession of a good many old and very dear 
friends. I woke up one day, however, to 
find that, like the proverbial pitcher, I had 
gone to the well once too often. 

How well I remember my first meeting 
Elsa. It was at the opera and Mary Garden 
was singing "Louise." I know nothing of 
music, but in a dumb, unreasoning way I am 
tremendously fond of it, and "Louise" — this 



My Novel Idea 



was the first time I heard it — made a deep 
impression on me. Elsa and I were in a box 
with some people. I did not catch her name 
when introduced, and was so placed that for 
the first half of the evening hardly even saw 
her, but afterwards remembered a fleeting 
impression of a very lovely, charming woman of 
the world, with a quality peculiarly her own, 
both gracious and thoroughbred. Then by 
some shift in our box party, I found myself 
in the chair directly behind her. She also 
admired" Louise," which she knew thoroughly, 
and was deeply fond of music, so we only 
talked in the intervals, but they were long 
and gave me plenty of opportunity. I found 
her sympathetic and we were getting along 
famously, when I received one of the most 
curious surprises of my life. I was telling her 
of a recent strange little personal experience of 
mine to which she was listening with the live- 
liest interest, when at a certain point she said, 
" I must tell Seton that. " " Seton? " I asked. 
"My husband, Seton," she replied, and I felt 



My Novel Idea 



in the cardiac region a curious sharp Httle 
twinge. I was so amazed that I drew back 
in my chair and stopped talking. Here was a 
new one! With my practices, if not theories, 
of many years, a woman whom I had only 
known for half an hour, however charming 
she might be, says "My husband" and I feel 
a twinge, slight perhaps but unmistakable, 
of pain! I had not thought about it at all, 
although I must have known from the first 
that she was not an unmarried woman, not 
from her self-possession, — Heaven knows our 
modern girls leave nothing to be desired on the 
score of self-possession, — but something in 
her poise, her breadth of view. 

I always felt that it would be well-nigh 
impossible to describe Elsa. There was some- 
thing intangible, evanescent about her pe- 
culiar charm for which mere written words 
are totally inadequate. While perhaps her 
strongest mental characteristic was a certain 
judicial quality, it was coupled with a some- 
thing almost the exact opposite. A woman 



My Novel Idea 



some time afterwards in speaking of her 
said, "You know, Elsa Gardner always sug- 
gests to me a wood nymph." It is curious 
that in writing of her or thinking of her things 
come to me that other women have said of 
her, but it is quite natural, as she was strangely 
attractive to women as well as to men. As 
I once told her, I noticed that when she was 
among a group of women, all apparently 
equally intimate and dear friends, each one 
had a little personal note of tenderness in 
regard to Elsa quite different from what they 
showed towards any one else. 

The judicial quality, which I felt strongly, 
even the first night I met her, is, I think, the 
rarest of all qualities in a woman. You may 
have clever women, witty women, brilliant 
women, but rarely a judicial woman, one who 
arrives at conclusions by calm processes of 
reason. In fact, I am rather inclined to think 
it a dangerous quality for a woman to possess, 
for unless almost abnormally developed, it is 
more than apt to lead her astray. A woman's 



My Novel Idea 



instinct is wonderfully strong and true but 
when she ceases to trust to this and attempts 
to be guided by cold reason, the results are 
more than often disastrous. 

I find it most difficult to convey an ade- 
quate idea of even Elsa's personal appearance. 
Something classic, perhaps Grecian about the 
line of her nose and chin, but anything of 
severity in the picture was entirely softened 
away by the frame — masses of fair brown hair 
of that almost indescribable color sometimes 
called "mouse," low over the brow and ears, 
worn so simply and apparently naturally 
that it seemed as though she could wear it 
no other way, but I learned afterwards it 
had been suggested by a celebrated London 
coiffeur after exhaustive study and trial. It 
was a high-spirited, rebellious head of hair, 
impatient of restraint, and with an inborn 
tendency to mischievousness. No matter how 
carefully confined, before long it would break 
loose in the most surprising little ways. There 
was never anything serious in its prank- 



My Novel Idea 



ishness and I rather believe its owner did not 
feel quite as provoked about it as at times 
she would have it appear. I for one would 
not have had its spirit broken for anything in 
the world. 

Elsa had a broad low brow with steady eyes, 
rather far apart. There was a something, 
particularly in dinner dress, thoroughbred 
and stag-like about the carriage of her head 
and the lines of her throat and shoulders. 

When I had only known Elsa a very short 
time I proposed that we should do a little 
something, not improper or out of the way at 
all, but perhaps rather intime, considering 
we had only met two or three days before. 
"Why, Mr. Morgan," she said, "I couldn't 
possibly do that, I don't know you well 
enough." "Now, Mrs. Gardner," I replied, 
"I was reading an advertisement of the 
Hecker-Jones Milling Company the other 
day about their flour and I suggest that we 
adopt it as our motto. " "Why, " she replied 
laughing, "what could anything they say 



10 My Novel Idea 

have to do with us?" "You '11 see; it read, 
'Eventually — Why not now?'" She looked 
at me quickly. I met her eyes, held them 
for an appreciable instant. "All right," she 
said, "I '11 come." 

Elsa had wonderful eyes. A woman who 
loved her dearly once told me that she would 
rather look in Elsa's eyes than in any eyes in 
the world. This was such a sweeping state- 
ment that I felt it incumbent upon me to test 
its accuracy myself and did so the next time 
I met Elsa, somewhat to her embarrassment. 
I cordially endorsed the sentiment. 

I began to call her "Elsa" almost curiously 
soon. There is nothing I loathe and despise 
more than a certain type of masculine mind 
which counts cheap familiarity as an achieve- 
ment and this spirit was farthest from my. 
thoughts, but thinking of her and talking to 
her as I did, it was simply out of the question 
to use her formal title. She appreciated this 
and did not object, but it was months before 
she would call me "Ralph" and then only 



My Novel Idea II 

very occasionally, as a mark of some special 
approval, and when she did I told her it made 
me feel as though she were stroking my hair. 

I soon noticed one thing. Whether I was 
with Elsa for a few moments or many hours, 
it seemed all too short. The sense of the 
impending parting was always with me from 
the very first. One day I wrote her of this 
and asked her if she remembered the old story 
of the poor woman from the inland New 
England farm, who, when she saw the ocean 
for the first time, said she thanked God that 
once before she died she had seen enough of 
something. Well, I believed that if I were 
led to the brink of eternity and told, " There 's 
eternity and here *s Elsa, now I hope you 're 
satisfied, " I 'd shake my head doubtfully and 
reply, "Perhaps it '11 seem long enough." 

I had perhaps met Elsa four or five times 
when I was struck with a brilliant idea. I had 
for years thought that some day or other I 
would write a novel, but before you can write 
anything the first essential is to have some- 



12 My Novel Idea 

thing to write about. The requisite theme or 
plot had never as yet forced itself on my 
attention. I had always also believed that 
anything true and real should from that very 
fact, if equally well told, be of more value 
than the mere product of imagination. 

Well, my brilliant idea was this. Here was 
infinitely the most interesting and biggest 
thing that had come into my life. I would 
write it out as I lived it, the title to be, "How 
I Lived and Wrote My Novel." The idea 
had also brilliant possibilities on the side — it 
would open up an intimacy with Elsa im- 
mediately that I could not hope to bring about 
for years, if ever, in the ordinary course of 
events. You see, I could write up our daily 
life, using the actual facts as a foundation, 
but in the writing could give expression to all 
I felt, what the little daily happenings with 
her meant to me, and putting the truth with 
perhaps some little necessary embellishments 
at times in the guise of fiction, I could show 
it to her and let her know things which it 



My Novel Idea 15 

would otherwise have been impossible to speak 
to her about. 

I went to work with enthusiasm, wrote up 
the rough outlines of the first few chapters 
bearing on what had already happened. 
Chapter I, for instance, was "The Night I 
First Heard 'Louise' and Met Elsa." Then 
I went along in the same way for three or four 
more chapters, telling much of what I have 
given above, although some of it I think came 
after the start of the novel idea. It is hard 
on looking back afterwards to get the chro- 
nology exactly straight. When I next met 
her I told her my idea. She said, "Ralph, 
that will be great. It will be no end of fun 
trying to separate fact from fiction. It will 
be as good as a game. " I smiled a bit grimly 
to myself as I thought that if she but knew 
she 'd find precious little fiction about it. 
We had a perfect afternoon and I felt that the 
great idea was already bearing fruit. Cer- 
tainly we had never seemed quite so intimate 
before. 



14 My Novel Idea 

I trotted right off and wrote that afternoon 
up as Chapter V, "I Tell Elsa my Novel 
Idea and Take a Big Step Forward," and re- 
counted more or less of what had taken place, 
adding things according to my theory which 
I could not have said and bringing out my 
idea of the more intimate bearing of what had 
actually been spoken. I told her, for instance, 
how, seeing her, there had come back to me a 
recollection which I had forgotten for many 
years — a candy which an old Turk whom I 
used to know put on the market, calling it 
"Turkish Lacoons — ^A Morsel of Pure De- 
light." Knowing that she was going to read 
what I had written, you see I could grow quite 
gay and lay little traps. For instance, in 
speaking of the novel idea, I put in, "Elsa, 
dear child, thinks it is a game. " 

Then I went on to tell how what I was doing 
reminded me of D'Annunzio and Duse but 
with one essential difference — ^he sacrificed 
Duse while I was entirely willing to sacrifice 
myself. I was actuated by exactly the same 



My Novel Idea 15 

Spirit as the scientific investigator who has 
himself inoculated with the yellow fever germ. 
If tragedy comes, if I die of a broken heart, 
so much the worse for me but the better for 
Art. With an eye on Elsa, I put in a foot- 
note, "Observe the capital A." It was most 
interesting and by keeping the touch light 
I was able to handle pretty serious things. 
For what did Kipling say in the introduction 
to one of his books of stories? — "In jesting 
guise, but ye are wise and know what the jest 
is worth." Elsa, Hke the inhabitants of 
India, was also wise and I shrewdly opine 
knew full well, at all times, what the jests 
were worth. 

About this time I had a very curious little 
conversation with her. I was telling her some 
of the intimate, fanciful little personal things 
I was so fond of dreaming about her, when she 
pulled me up sharply and said almost sternly, 
"Ralph, you mustn't think such things of 
me, you have no right to. " I knew she meant 
what she said, or at least thought she did, but 



i6 My Novel Idea 

determined to try her out a little. "Elsa, 
there's no use talking that way; I can't 
help feeling and thinking of you as I do, and 
you know it, but perhaps I can stop telling 
you." She hesitated a moment and then 
said, even if a little doubtfully, " No, if you are 
going to think them you might just as well 
keep on telling me I suppose. " I shall always 
regard it as the greatest achievement of my 
career that I kept my smile entirely beneath 
the surface, not even letting it come up to 
take breath. 

I had always been, like certain other more 
illustrious citizens of this Republic, rather a 
practical man. The situation in which I now 
found myself and the efforts required to live 
up to what was expected of me had certain 
elements of amusement. I spoke to Elsa once 
about this and told her that while of course I 
was going to try to become what she evidently 
wanted and expected me to be — ^an orchid— 
I was afraid the transition from a meat diet 
was going to prove rather violent. 



My Novel Idea 17 

Consciously, as we count time by the 
calendar, I had only known Elsa a few short 
weeks but in some curious subconscious way I 
felt I had known her always, since the very 
beginning of things, and she seemed to imder- 
stand. Elsa happened one day to remark, 
"If I were free — " It would have been too 
banal to say much, it was perhaps banal to 
say anything, but I could n't help it — I told 
her I would have done what I had never yet 
done to any woman. I had chanced to men- 
tion several days before the rather curious 
fact that I had never asked any woman to 
marry me, and she understood as she will 
always now understand everything. 

I then wrote Chapter VI, title, " I Show Elsa 
First Five Chapters and Part I Comes to an 
End. ' ' We read all the chapters over together 
again from the beginning, with what I had 
just written. I told her of the man who said 
not even Almighty Providence could take 
from him the good dinners he had eaten. 
These few short weeks had been so good, so 



1 8 My Novel Idea 

wonderful, and would be mine as long as 
memory lasted. But I explained and she 
agreed with me that it was useless to go on 
with the writing. The history of the daily 
occurrences from now on would be of course 
most interesting to us, but, while the present 
phase of our life continued, they could be 
nothing but more or less repetition. The 
"Novel Idea" which had so largely led me to 
do it at the first as a means of bringing us 
closer together had accomplished its work 
long ago. There was nothing we could not 
now talk about without the necessity of first 
going through the pretense of writing it out 
as fiction, and I therefore considered that 
Book I was closed. Whatever else was to 
come — it might be years, if ever, before some 
new phase of our lives made it possible — was in 
the lap of the gods. Until then we must write 
Finis. 



II 

A COLLEGE BALL GAME FROM THE PLAYERS* 
BENCH — A NEW ANGLE 



19 



II 



A COLLEGE BALL GAME FROM THE PLAYERS' 
BENCH — ^A NEW ANGLE 

'X'HE weather was lovely and when our 
* graduate manager telephoned to me, 
suggesting that I should go down with him 
to see Columbia play Princeton, I decided to 
take an afternoon off. Columbia had a very 
much better nine than usual, and while the 
Princeton nine always ranks about the top of 
the college nines, this particular season they 
were weak and it looked as though we ought 
to pull off the game, and if anything of that 
kind was going to happen I wanted to be in 
at the death. 

I have always been very fond of Princeton. 
All my family on my mother's side for genera- 
tions have gone there, my great-grandfather 

21 



22 -A. College Ball Game 

for many years occupying that almost mytho- 
logical position, the oldest living graduate; 
both my uncles were Princeton men, one of 
them, by the way, rowing on the Princeton 
Freshman Crew which won the Intercollegiate 
Regatta at Saratoga back in '74 or '75. The 
other, after graduating and taking a course 
at Johns Hopkins and abroad, returned to 
Princeton as a tutor in mathematics. As a 
boy of fourteen or fifteen, I used very often to 
go down to see him, and with this family 
history and these opportunities I naturally got 
to know Princeton very well and grew very 
fond of it. I have ever since kept in very 
close touch with Princeton affairs, going there 
very much more often than to any other 
outside university. 

I shall never forget one little experience I 
had the first time I visited my uncle, the tutor. 
He asked me if I would like to hear one of the 
recitations and of course to a schoolboy it was 
a great opportunity and I eagerly accepted. 
To my great delight when I got to the class- 



A. College Ball Game 23 

room there was one of my great Princeton 
football heroes, one of the finest linesmen of his 
day. My enthusiasm was a bit dampened 
when in the course of the hour he was called 
to the board and was rapturously applauded 
by the rest of the class for even knowing the 
theorem (it was in trigonometry). I was 
greatly shocked to notice that not only my 
football friend had been sitting with his book 
open during the course of the recitation, even 
giving a backward glance on his way to the 
board, but practically every one else in the 
room was doing the same, poring over their 
books with but the barest attempts at con- 
cealment, while my uncle apparently sat 
curiously, and as it seemed almost wilfully, 
ignorant of this to me terrible breach of class- 
room discipline. 

After the hour was over on our way back to 
his home, he asked me how I liked the way he 
conducted his recitations. I said, "Uncle 
George, I don't want to be impolite, but I 
thought it was perfectly rotten. How could 



24 A College Ball Game 

you help noticing how they were all keeping 
their books open and even looking back at 
them when you called them up?" "Why, 
Charlie," he replied, "you don't catch on. 
That was the fourth section, made up of the 
laziest and stupidest men in the class. Most 
of them don't study a bit but I have them four 
hotirs a week in the classroom and by calling 
up, as you may have noticed, only two or 
three of them and pretending not to see what 
the others are up to, I get practically four 
hours' hard study a week out of every one of 
them." 

If my respect for the intellectual side of a 
Princeton football hero had received rather a 
rude jolt, it was more than coimterbalanced 
by this entirely unexpected exhibition of horse 
sense on the part of that wild young Princeton 
tutor, my beloved uncle. 

But I am supposed to be writing about a 
baseball game. The manager and I met at 
the Pennsylvania Station, had a hasty bite, 
and took the 12.08 train, as we wished to get 



A College Ball Game 25 



to Princeton a bit early to talk over some 
matters connected with the Princeton- Colum- 
bia dual track meet which was coming off in a 
couple of weeks. We went right out to the 
grounds, where we found they were holding 
their Annual Spring Championship Inter- 
class Athletic Games, which, for some reason 
or other they call at Princeton Caledonian 
Games, possibly on account of the long 
connection with the institution of that fine 
old Scotchman, George Goldie. 

Our ball team was in a far corner of the 
field indulging in a little limbering up, batting 
practice, etc. We went over to speak to 
them and then went back in front of the track 
house and had a talk with the Princeton 
undergraduate track manager, McMillan, and 
Keene Fitzpatrick, the trainer. There had 
been a misunderstanding in regard to the 
eligibility rules for the Columbia-Princeton 
meet, as the rules of the universities differed 
somewhat, and as there had been corres- 
pondence with various people taking part, it 



26 A. College Ball Game 

took some little time to see just how each side 
had stated their position and to arrive at a 
final basis for a compromise. We found 
ourselves, therefore, still talking it over when 
the baseball game started, and as it had to be 
settled, for several innings we stayed where we 
were and only watched the progress of the 
game from the corner of our eyes. 

Things were not going well for Columbia. 
What few hits we were making were so 
scattered as to amount to nothing, while 
everything seemed to be "breaking right" for 
Princeton. A man would single, be advanced 
to second, and then another hit would come 
along scoring him, the timely Princeton hitting 
being helped out by the occasional Columbia 
errors falling in exactly the right place. 

We got through our discussion and went 
over and sat on the players' bench right along- 
side the coach and team just as this process 
was well under way. 

We found it was the first half of the third 
inning with the score 2 to o in Princeton's 



A. College Ball Ganxe 27 

favor. In our half of the inning Columbia 
went out in one, two, three order, but Prince- 
ton kept up their good work with a vengeance. 
The first man up singled, second went out on 
a fly, the next man tripled, scoring one run, 
and then scored on a hit to the pitcher which 
the runner beat out to first. The following 
man struck out and the side should have been 
retired on a long fly to right field but this was 
obligingly muffed and another nm came in. 
The next man mercifully flied out, netting 
three runs to this inning, making the score 5 
to o in Princeton's favor. The game looked 
hopelessly lost. Both the manager and myself 
no iced that not only was our crack pitcher 
being hit far more freely than usual, but he 
did n't seem to be working just right. His 
favorite ball, delivered low from about the 
knee, which should rise and pass the batter 
between his waist and shoulder, seemed to be 
going high and called a "ball" instead of 
"strike," as expected. The manager asked 
the coach, " What 's the trouble with Smith's 



28 A College Ball Game 

low ball, Bill?" "It's the mound; look at 
the mound. " The Princeton pitcher's mound 
for some reason or other was unusually high, 
so that when Smith delivered this ball from 
about his knee, as was his custom, it started 
so high that by the time it reached the batter 
on its upward course, it was outside the strike 
zone. 

I became at once very much interested in 
the talk of the coach and players on the bench. 
It brought out an entirely new angle of base- 
ball, the intimate, personal side, in a way I 
had never appreciated before. Our baseline 
coaches had been calling out to the Princeton 
pitcher from time to time, "Just about one 
inning more for you, my boy," "Here's 
where we get you, " etc., and the players were 
constantly talking to each other about his 
work, telling what they thought he had and 
why they should be able to hit him. The 
manager said to Rosey, "He should be pie 
for you, Rosey." "I should think so; noth- 
ing but straight and out, straight and outo 



A. College Ball Game S9 

Just watch me get to him." And Rosey, 
honest, hard-working little player that he was, 
soon made good his boast. One line drive of 
his, good for one base and probably two, had 
been luckily "speared" by the Princeton third 
baseman, but a little later, in the fourth inning, 
he cracked out a fine three-bagger when the 
bases were full and put Columbia right in the 
game again when it had seemed hopelessly 
lost. In fact, all through the afternoon he 
was hitting the ball right on the nose. 

Our No. 4 man, the position of clean-up 
hitter, however, did not seem to be working 
right. Instead of hitting with his usual free 
swing, he seemed to be just poking at the ball. 
I asked the manager what the matter was. 
He said, "He 's following the out curve. He *s 
always weak on out curves." One point I 
noticed especially about all the men's batting: 
if they struck at a good ball in their right 
form, even though they missed it by a foot, 
they received nothing but encouragement — • 
"Good swinging, boy," "The big one 's left," 



30 A. College Ball Game 

"It only takes one, you know," etc., they 
would call from the bench. But if they 
offered at a bad one which would have been 
called a "ball" if they let it pass, or forgot 
their batting form and struck from a cramped 
position awkwardly, there would be growls 
and muttered curses. 

But to get back to the course of the game. 
In our half of the fourth inning the first man 
went out, but two errors, a dropped fly, and a 
fumbled grounder put the next two on base 
and a single following gave Columbia their 
first run. The next man up also singled, 
filling the bases again amidst great excitement, 
and then good little Rosey tripled to right, as 
spoken of above, scoring three runs. The 
next man was an easy out, leaving Rosey on 
third. This inning, however, changed the 
complexion of the game absolutely: four runs 
had come in and 5 to 4 was a very differ- 
ent proposition from 5 to o. 

The Princeton stands, which had been 
sitting in quiet enjoyment of a game coming 



-A. College Ball Game 31 

their way unexpectedly easily, woke up with a 
start. On our players' bench and among the 
few faithful rooters who had accompanied the 
Columbia team, all was excitement and ex- 
pectation. Things were coming our way; we 
were right in it again. 

When Princeton had their big lead the work 
of the Columbia coaches on the baseline had 
struck me as a little unpleasant. The ethics 
of telling the opposing pitcher that he could 
only last one inning more, "Good-night for 
you, old fellow," etc., seemed rather dubious, 
especially as Princeton was keeping very quiet 
when their turn at coaching came. But as 
soon as we drew up and the outcome of the 
game became very doubtful, there was little 
to choose. They became every bit as noisy 
and just about as personal. They displayed, 
however, a curious lack of originality. The 
man who coached them from the third-base 
line, and did most of the Princeton talking, 
said one thing twenty-five times if he said it 
once, " Here 's where we take this little game." 



32 A. College Ball Game 

He ran the entire gamut of emotions from 
despairing hope to exultant certainty by the 
intonation he threw into this slogan. It 
reminded me of a story I once heard. A 
German missionary in Africa was called on in 
the course of his duty to hold a service for 
some natives whom he knew did not under- 
stand a word of the German language. He 
was a man of resource and evidently believed 
in the conservation of energy. When it came 
to his sermon he merely repeated the German 
alphabet over and over again. After going 
through it three or four times as a sort of a 
warming up canter, the appeal he put into his 
91 5B e ® e g @ would have touched a heart 
of stone, but he did n't have anything on my 
Princeton's friend's, "Here's where we take 
this little game." 

The game now went along for three or four 
innings without any runs being scored or any 
decided advantage to either side; what there 
was being in our favor. Our pitcher had 
evidently grown accustomed to his sur- 



j\ College Ball Gaxne 33 

roundings and was doing splendid work, up 
to his top form, which is saying a good deal. 
The Princeton hitting had stopped absolutely 
and for several innings they hardly got a ball 
outside the diamond. While we were not 
making many hits we were hitting the ball 
harder than they, several times threatening 
to score. Our men had absolutely regained 
their confidence. They felt that the worst 
was over and the "break" when it did come 
would go their way. 

One thing that struck me particularly in 
this period of the game on the players' bench 
was the constant encouragement and solicitude 
for the pitcher. The pitcher is fully seventy- 
five per cent, of the average baseball game and 
probably considerably more in college games. 
The players realize this and do all in their 
power to render him effective. Our catcher 
would constantly call, " Now you 're working, 
Smith, " " Get your back in. Smith, " " That 's 
pitching, Smith," and as Smith was an A 
No. I pitcher, his department being decidedly 



34 -^ College Ball Game 

better than the work of the balance of the 
team, and the men all knew and appreciated 
this, he never came back to the bench after 
an inning without receiving kindly words of 
encouragement and approbation. 

In the eighth inning we made the run needed 
to tie up the game. The first man at the bat 
singled to right, stole second, and came home 
on a single to left. The next man singled to 
right field on a hit and run play, but Prince- 
ton fielded the ball in sharply, catching the 
runner at the plate, and a moment later 
the shortstop gathered in a line drive and 
touched out a man running from second to 
third, putting an end to a rally which had 
threatened to sew up the game then and there. 

About this time a very amusing incident 
occurred. With one run needed to give us the 
lead, one of our men, Danny, was running to 
third with every intention of getting home as 
quickly as possible and settling the matter, 
once and for all. The Princeton third base- 
man naturally held somewhat different views 



-A College Ball Game 35 

on this subject, and interfered in a manner 
which Danny thought was not justified by 
the established rules of baseball. In a minute 
there was a mix-up with fists raised and players 
running up from both sides. After a few 
excited words the men were seen to shake 
hands amidst boisterous laughter and applause 
from the grandstand. When Danny came 
back to the bench after the inning was over, 
having failed to score, the coach said, "Did 

you call that Princeton man a Danny?" 

using a term that the New York Times would 
never feel justified in putting in its immaculate 
columns. Danny replied, "How in hell do I 
know? I was mad all through." And all 
discussion ceased. Danny is a broth of a boy, 
red-headed, fighting Irish all through, and 
with a pair of legs which would blush any 
self-respecting piano into modest retirement. 
The popular opinion on the Columbia bench 
was that some Princeton man's life had been 
luckily spared by the adjustment of the little 
difficulty. 



36 A College Ball Game 

The way the coach and his fellow-players 
would talk to the men about to go to the bat 
at this time when all was excitement was most 
interesting. A man would be due to come up 
second or third say from the man then batting. 
The coach would say, "Bud, if you get your 
chance will you hit it?" And Bud would 
grasp his bat with his strong brown hands 
until his fingers and knuckles would go all 
blotchy, purple and white, with the tenseness 
of his grip. "You bet your life I will. Bill, 
just watch me." If fell determination and 
fierce looks could be absolutely counted on to 
breed base hits, the Princeton pitcher would 
have left the box then of his own accord, 
instead of waiting to be batted out of it in an 
inning or two, as actually happened. 

Princeton did n't score in their half of the 
eighth and the game was still tied. In the 
ninth inning Columbia kept up their heavy 
batting. Rosey singled to right, Smith was 
safe on the error of the Princeton pitcher, and 
the next man laid down a bunt, putting the 



A. College Ball Game 37 

runners on second and third. Watt singled 
to right and Rosey scored. Our next man hit 
to first base and Smith was caught going to 
third. Watt then proceeded to steal third 
unassisted, but the best the next Columbia 
man could do was an easy groimder. This, 
however, gave us one run, putting us in the 
lead for the first time. 

In Princeton's half of the ninth the first 
man walked, the second man was out, short- 
stop to first, the runner taking second. The 
next man up went out, third to first, but with 
two out a little Texas Leaguer dropped safe 
between three men, any one of whom looked 
as though he ought to have gotten it, and the 
game was tied again instead of being won by 
Columbia. 

The tenth inning opened with a new Prince- 
ton pitcher. He walked the first man and 
was promptly yanked off the mound, a third 
pitcher going in. The man on first was forced 
at second when Danny hit to the pitcher. 
Danny died stealing second and the third 



38 A. College Ball Game 

man went out, shortstop to first. No runs. 
In their half the first Princeton man singled, 
the next flied out, but the third was walked. 
The next man up got a short hit to centre, 
filling the bases. The man on third then was 
forced at the home plate, but with the bases 
still full the Princeton man at the bat lined 
out a nice single to right, scoring the winning 
run. 

The manager turned sadly to me, saying 
almost in the words of our Princeton friend, 
"There goes the game; it 's a mighty tough 
one to lose." And it certainly was. After 
coming up from a score of 5 to o against us, 
tying the game, and getting the lead, with a 
number of chances to win by a decisive score, 
it was pretty hard to lose out 6-5 in the tenth 
inning in this way. We walked down to the 
station feeling that we never wanted to see the 
old place again. What a difference putting 
the one run on the other side of the score 
would have made. Our team had lost three 
or four very important games by a very small 



-A. College Ball Game 39 

margin; in fact, at the close of the season we 
found that Columbia had only been beaten 
more than two runs in one game, when the 
score was 4 to o against us. The manager 
remarked, "If you only had ten runs to place 
where you needed them during the season, 
what an awful difference it would make." 
I suggested that here was a new idea. Base- 
ball teams could be handicapped by giving 
them a bisque of a run or two to be used where 
they wanted them during the season. 

The next morning, however, when the 
feeling of soreness over what had seemed the 
unnecessary loss of a very important game had 
somewhat worn off, we all realized that it 
had been a bully good sporting day and we 
would only too gladly go through another 
such one at the very first opportunity. 



Ill 

ONE TOUCH OF NATURE MAKES THE WHOLE 
WORLD KIN 



41 



Ill 



ONE TOUCH OF NATURE MAKES THE WHOLE 
WORLD KIN 

■\ X 7E all are creatures of habit and I have 
' ' always been peculiarly so. For many 
years I lunched in the little front Broadway 
room of the Cafe Savarin in the Equitable 
Life Building. It was noisy, the food, not 
particularly good, was expensive, and my 
friends often asked me why I kept going to 
the rotten old place — but kept going I did 
and every day as regularly as the sun rose I 
could be found in my usual corner at one of 
three or four tables. 

Why, I remember on my way down-town 
the day the Equitable Building burned, when 
the guard on the elevated road told me it was 

43 



44 One XoucK of Natvjire 

burning and must be a total loss, instead of 
considering the perhaps millions of dollars of 
damage with the enormous friction and inter- 
ruption to the entire business world the loss of 
the securities stored in the great vaults must 
entail, my first thought was, "Where the devil 
shall I lunch now? " 

Going as I did so regularly for many years, 
I naturally grew to know very well the waiters 
in charge of the few tables, at one of which I 
sat each day. I always had definite theories 
on the treatment of waiters. I tip them 
fairly liberally and under no circumstances 
ever row with them for two very good and 
sufficient reasons. In the first place, if you 
lose your temper the meal is spoiled beyond 
possibility of redemption, and secondly, I 
know at bottom they are human beings like 
the rest of us. From their constant associa- 
tion with vast numbers of people they are 
most excellent judges of human natiu"e and 
in a very short time are certain to appreciate 
and return by every means in their power 



MaKes tKe WKole ^^orld Rin 45 

any decent, kindly feeling which may be 
displayed towards them. 

And the provocations they have to put up 
with. The awful number of Americans who 
think it is smart, shows a man of the world, to 
find fault with and bully the poor waiter 
before he has even a chance to try to please. 
The little oddities of personality the restaurant 
lunch will bring out! I remember one day in 
the Savarin a tall distinguished -looking man 
took the table next to mine. His dress, clean- 
cut features indicated the lawyer, with the 
possible suggestion of the statesman in his 
smooth-shaven, thin-lipped austerity. He 
carefully adjusted his glasses with their broad, 
black ribbon while the waiter hung at his 
shoulder. At last he ordered — "A hot roast 
beef sandwich," the cheapest and in fact the 
only cheap thing on the bill of fare. This was 
discouraging, but the waiter still had hopes. 
"An3rthing to drink, sir?" "Yes," he said, 
" a long glass of water — with ice. " 

Another day I had a friend of mine at limch, 



46 One ToxicK of Natvire 

a very successful business man with a rough 
brusque way about him. He was conscious 
of this and pushed it along as a bit of a pose. 
I had my favorite waiter, Albert, that day. 
He was serving the lunch with exactly that 
proper mixture of polite attention and defer- 
ence which goes so far to make you think that 
your suspicion that the fish is perhaps not as 
fresh as it ought to be is unworthy of you. All 
went well until my friend called to him, 
"Josh, get me some more butter." Just 
think, he, a worthy exponent of the unfailing 
courtesy of La Belle France, to be called to by 
a bull-necked, red-headed American upstart, 
"Josh, get me some more butter." You 
should have seen his look of indignant protest 
directed towards my friend, the appeal of his 
glance to me. I could say nothing, of course, 
but I tried to make my eyes tell him in re- 
sponse that it was too much to hope that all 
this world of ours could be peopled by 
sensitive souls like ourselves and I think he 
understood. 



MaKes tKe Whole World K.in 47 

But to get down to the incident I started 
to write about. All the waiters in my little 
particular section of the Savarin were very nice 
fellows with one possible exception. He was 
a heavy, pale-faced Frenchman, absolutely 
devoid of expression, with flat cheeks like 
boards and eyes which suggested nothing so 
much as two holes burned in such boards. 
My waiters' system worked even on him and 
he always served me very attentively and 
politely, but none of my friends who used to 
Ixmch with me from time to time could stand 
him at all. He seemed to get on their nerves. 
They would immediately speak sharply to 
him, and while he was too well trained to 
obtrusively show any resentment, he wotdd do 
his work mechanically, with something of 
sullenness which you could not help feeling. 
At the best he seemed but a wooden block, 
necessary perhaps in the mechanism of the 
great restaiu'ant, but absolutely without any 
personality or human feeling. 

All this was imtil a certain memorable never- 



48 One ToxicH of Nature 

to-be-forgotten day. It had been a day of 
great excitement. My offices are on the river- 
front, on the corner of Liberty and West 
streets, and about 11.30 there had been a 
tremendous explosion which shook the building 
to its very foundation and almost broke its 
heavy plate-glass windows. Many thousands 
of dollars' worth of glass in that section 
was shattered. No one knew what had hap- 
pened. I hurried from the office and started 
down West Street towards the Battery, 
from which direction the sound came; if you 
could locate at all anything which was so enor- 
mous it seemed to come from everywhere. 
The streets were crowded with people all run- 
ning in the same general direction. As I passed 
by one of the little cheap booths on West 
Street where they sell shoes, etc., for the sailors, 
the proprietor, an old foreigner, standing in 
the doorway called out to me, "What is 
it, what is it?" I knew no more than he did, 
but with a fling of my arm I shouted back, 
""The Japs are landing at the Battery. On to 



MaKes tHe "WKole "World K-in 49 

meet them!" I shall never forget his look of 
utter bewilderment and consternation. 

At the Battery my bootblack friends knew 
all about it, as I was sure that they would, and 
told me that a powder barge over on the Jersey 
coast had blown up. After watching the 
thousands of excited people who were gathered 
there for a little while, I went to the Savarin 
for my lunch at about the usual hour, and by 
chance found myself being waited on by my 
friend referred to above. In some way he had 
evidently learned where my offices were 
because he asked me with quite a little show of 
interest whether any damage had been done 
to our building which he knew was on the 
water-front and approximately close to the 
scene of the explosion. I told him, "No." 
Then he went on to say, "A good many curious 
things have happened lately, have n't they, 
Mr. Morgan? " I was not particularly anxious 
to talk to him and asked him shortly what he 
was referring to. He said, " Did n't you read 
of the burglary the other night in Flatbush?" 



50 One TovicK of Natvire 

I said, "No." "Yes, sir," he said, "the 
Evening Telegram had a long account of it; 
I was the man. " " What, " I said, " you were 
the burglar?" For the first time in the years 
I had known him I saw him laugh. "No," 
he replied, "I was the man they robbed. 
The Evening Telegram said he was a mer- 
chant. " " Now, " he said, " if they had called 
me a soup merchant it would have been about 
right." I could have almost hugged him in 
my contrition. There we for years had been 
considering him a hopeless lump without one 
particle of human feeling, a pumpkin-head, 
the boys' Jack-o'-lantern, but with the light 
behind, the gleam of intelligence left out, and 
all the time under his unprepossessing exterior 
he had concealed this fine sense of humor. 
After this we became great friends and one of 
my chief regrets when the Savarin was des- 
troyed in the Equitable fire was that I lost 
track of him and have never seen him since 
that day. 



IV 

COLUMBIA ROWING SEASON, I9II 



SI 



IV 

COLUMBIA ROWING SEASON, I9II 

r^ENTLEMEN of the Columbia crews, 
Varsity, Freshman, Four, substitutes 
and 19 II squad generally, as Dean Van Am- 
ringe will tell you, we altimni are mighty 
proud of every mother's son of you. You 
have added much this season to Columbia's 
fame in the sport which has always meant 
most to her — rowing. Morton Bogue well 
said in his letter to the Alumni Weekly, all 
things considered, this has been Columbia's 
best year on the water. Dean Van Amringe 
will present later the trophies and prizes you 
have won and no doubt will refer particularly 
to the victories they commemorate, but some 
general impressions of the season and its 
lessons may not be out of place now. 

S3 



54 Columbia Ro-win^ Season, 1911 

The preliminary season could not have 
been better. The Varsity rowed four races 
and won them all without even being fully 
extended. What happened at Poughkeepsie 
is of course fresh in all our minds. The Four 
showed excellent form and rowed a creditable 
race. The Freshmen who had been improving 
steadily throughout the season came to their 
own and by their splendid victory proved 
themselves easily the best Freshman crew of 
the year, and the Varsity race with Cornell was 
generally described in the press as the best 
race ever rowed at Poughkeepsie which, of 
course, means ever rowed in America. 

Who that saw the Varsity race will ever 
forget it? I can see it now. The wonderful 
pace of the first mile — for Wisconsin and 
Syracuse to drop back as they did was not 
surprising, but for the much-touted Pennsyl- 
vania, by many picked as the dark horse, to 
be left as though they were tied to a stake 
showed what Columbia and Cornell were 
doing. So it went for the second mile, the 



Colvimbia Ro-vsrin^ Season, 1911 55 

rest nowhere, Columbia and Cornell way out 
in front. Rowing practically the same stroke, 
sometimes one a point or two higher, some- 
times the other, there was very little to choose 
between them, although Columbia always 
showed the better form, the cleaner water- 
manship. At times the roughening water 
seemed to bother Cornell and they splashed 
considerably, but Colvmibia hardly at all, 
although we always had the worst of the 
course. After the second mile the nose of our 
shell began to show in front. Little by lit- 
tle after each desperate spurt of Cornell su- 
perbly answered by Downing, we crept away 
farther and farther — until at the bridge, the 
three-mile mark, we had a length and shortly 
after the precious open water began to show. 
When we answered their desperate spurt 
opposite the Cornell boat-house and took back 
the ten feet or so they had gained and a little 
more, and passed the three and a half mile 
mark with the same lead, over a length, 
rowing in the same superb form, the victory 



56 Columbia Ro"win^ Season, 1911 

was not only in our grasp, the race in otir 
hands, it was already put away on ice. Then 
just as Downing was about to raise the stroke 
for the final, the triumphant spurt, the break 
totally unexpected, not to be foreseen, came 
and we had lost. 

Gentlemen of the Varsity, it was tough, 
bitterly hard on you, but you must feel, you 
know, it was equally hard on us who were 
with you heart and soul that day, are with 
you now, and will be with you heart and soul 
at Poughkeepsie next June. 

A couple of days after I went up to New 
London to be Mr. Meikleham's guest, as I 
had been for a number of years past, on the 
referee's boat. I found that Poughkeepsie, 
our race with Cornell, had made a deep 
impression, far more so than usual. Yale 
was too full of their own troubles to bother 
much about anything, but Harvard knew all 
about the Cornell crew. They had learned of 
their trials, the fastest ever rowed at Cayuga, 
the crack Harvard Varsity itself had been 



Colvinibia Ro-win^ Season, 1911 57 

beaten by them some two or three lengths in 
their two-mile race on Decoration day, and as 
rowing men they well knew what our Colimibia 
crew must be to lead such a Cornell crew over 
a length for three and a half miles, and then 
only to lose for the reason we did, the collapse 
of one man. 

The strength of this impression was brought 
home to me by a curious little incident. I 
had met on the referee's boat a couple of 
years ago a Mr. Shillito, an old Harvard oar 
and father of Harvard oars. By the way, he 
gave the Harvard Freshmen this year the 
English shell in which they rowed their race 
with Yale. After the Varsity race he came 
up to me in the Griswold House and put his 
hands on my shoulders. "It 's too bad, old 
man," he said, "we had to give you such a 
licking." I drew myself up proudly and 
looked him straight in the eye. "That 's all 
right, Mr. Shillito, but you 're barking up 
the wrong tree. I 'm not Yale, I 'm Colum- 
bia. " Something in my expression must have 



58 Columbia Rcwin^ Season, 1911 

told him what I was thinking of at that 
moment, what Columbia would have done to 
that race had we been there, for he tacitly- 
acknowledged it in his reply. "Why, of 
course, I apologize; Columbia had a great 
crew." 

As Mr. Meikleham told us in his article in 
the Alumni News on the stroke, Cornell before 
they went abroad in '95 rowed entirely 
differently. After his return, however, Court- 
ney taught them practically the same stroke 
they have been rowing ever since. In '97 
they easily beat Yale and Harvard at Pough- 
keepsie and in '98 went up to New London and 
did the same thing. Since then the Cornell 
stroke has reigned supreme. Occasionally 
under some special circimistances or by some 
unusual combination of men they have been 
beaten, but on the average their sustained 
rowing form, the Cornell stroke, has been 
justly considered without a peer. The last 
two or three years, however, the public has 
been brought to realize that there is a new 



Columbia Ro"win^ Season, 1911 59 

Richmond in the field, and this fact was 
absolutely driven home at Poughkeepsie last 
June. To my mind it is the great lesson of 
rowing season of 191 1. 

We cannot say the King is dead but a full 
half of his domain has been taken from him, 
and over it now reigns a younger monarch 
destined some day to fully supplant him. 
The Cornell stroke as taught by "Old Man 
Courtney" is still great, as great as ever, but 
in the Colimibia stroke as taught by Jim Rice 
and rowed by our Columbia crews it has met 
its full match at last. 



V 

MY CROWDED HOUR 



6i 



MY CROWDED HOUR 

^ A 7" HEN I was in college we were in the 
habit of spending our summers on 
Great South Bay opposite Fire Island. It 
was a very attractive place, plenty of good 
sailing in small boats, still water bathing on 
our side of the bay, and with the Surf Hotel 
at Fire Island, with fine surf bathing, a 
pleasant objective point to sail to across the 
bay. There was also at times very excellent 
blue fishing, both the tamer "chumming" 
in the bay and the more exciting trolling for 
the big ones outside in Fire Island inlet. 

While most of us lived in cottages, there was 
a big summer hotel right near which made a 
gathering point, and with plenty of boys of 

63 



64 My Cro-wded Hovir 

about my own age and no end of girls, we all 
managed to have a mighty good time. 

When I was about twenty, in my junior 
year I think it was, a Southern girl from 
Richmond began to spend her summers there. 
She was more than attractive and I was " hard 
hit" at once. A fine, big upstanding girl, 
fond of sailing, bathing, and all out-of-door 
sports. This was before the days of the 
present feminine ideal came into vogue — 
hipless, match-like persons with a curious 
suggestion of a question as to where the 
machinery could be concealed which caused 
them to run, but "run" nevertheless they 
certainly do. She had a bountiful, generous 
young figure, most attractive in its young 
womanhood, but which to expert eyes carried 
with it a menace for the near future. She 
was very pretty in a wholesome way, spoiled 
as became such a young Southern beauty, and 
with a curious little ever-present pout to her 
very full underlip, which always suggested to 
me the quivering premonition given by a 



My Cro-wded Hovir 65 

baby's mouth just before it is going to 
cry. 

We became great friends immediately and 
soon were recognized as one of the "Pairs" so 
customary and almost inevitable in the sum- 
mer life of such boys and girls. As a tribute to 
her spoiled imperiousness and because it struck 
me as perhaps a little romantic, I nicknamed 
her "Reine" and called her so for years, which 
was eminently satisfactory to me and appar- 
ently most pleasing to her Majesty. 

We had no end of pleasant times together. 
I remember well one very amusing little 
incident. At that time she was stopping at 
Patchogue, a couple of stations farther on, and 
asked me over to spend the day with her. 

She was at the station to meet me. The 
picture of health, brown as a berry, and with 
her blue eyes, and a most becoming tam- 
o'-shanter which set off her fair hair, in (those 
days girls wore home-knit tam-o'-shanters), 
she looked good enough to eat. After our 
greetings she said, "I 've planned a fine day, 



66 My Cro-wded Hour 

just what you like to do." I interjected 
that when I had not seen her for months any- 
day with her, no matter what we did, would 
be fine. But she brushed aside this frivolity 
and went right on. "A friend of mine has 
a new boat, the best in the bay, and he 's 
loaned her to me; we '11 sail all day long." 
Nothing could have suited me better. As she 
knew, I loved small boats, and to sail a new 
one, a crackerjack, with Reine as mate, would 
be all to the merry. 

It was a perfect summer day with a good 
full sail breeze blowing and we lost no time in 
getting out. The ideal weather had tempted 
every one and the bay was fvill of boats. As 
the best sailing ground was rather circum- 
scribed and we sailed morning and afternoon, 
before the day was over we had had friendly 
brushes with practically every possible rival 
of otir little borrowed champion, and to my 
shame be it confessed we had been worsted 
in each and every one. I had not seen Reine 
for months and with the man at the wheel or 



My Cro-wded Hoxir 67 

rather the man at the tiller only too anxious to 
be talked to and to talk, and some unfamil- 
iarity with the precise type of boat I was 
sailing, the results were more than disastrous. 
Reine told me afterwards that the owner of 
the boat was furious. It took him months of 
hard work to get back to the position he had 
so securely occupied before my frivolous 
treatment of serious matters had so abused 
his pride. 

She kept coming up for several summers. 
In the winters while I never got to Richmond, 
she had relatives and friends in Brooklyn 
whom she used to visit several times a year, 
and on these occasions I would run over from 
New York and see a good deal of her. It was 
a typical young college man's friendship, with 
decided leanings towards the sentimental side. 
I had not the slightest intention of settling 
down, which I think she understood, and we 
never crossed the boundary line, although at 
times we played, I must confess, pretty close 
to it. In all this period she quite properly 



68 My Cro-wded Ho\ir 

considered herself my best girl and I had not 
the least quarrel with the little airs of pro- 
prietorship which, in her Southern way, she 
assumed whenever we were thrown together. 

This had been going on for three or four 
years with every apparent prospect of con- 
tinuing indefinitely, but the unexpected, to me 
at least, happened. I received a letter from 
her announcing her engagement to Donald 
Caldwell. I knew Donald well. He was a 
very nice quiet fellow, also from Richmond, 
and had been up several times to visit her 
when she was spending her stimmers North. 
He had always fitted in the routine of our 
outdoor life so naturally and pleasantly that 
I had ceased to regard him after the first few 
days as a disturbing element at all, but he 
had evidently been spending the long winter 
months to better advantage. 

Well, after telling me she knew I would 
rather have the news from her than from any 
one else, she went on to say that she was 
coming up to Brooklyn for one of her visits and 



My Cro-wded Hovir 69 

suggested that I should come the following 
Wednesday to talk over old times. 

I really felt very badly. I knew how I 
would miss our many pleasant little times 
together, but I wanted her to be happy and 
Donald was a good fellow and ought to make 
her so. Always of a cheerful, optimistic 
disposition, by the time Wednesday came 
round I was almost reconciled and started off 
quite gayly, determined to make the best of 
the situation. 

We were both a little embarrassed at first 
but this soon wore off and then my crowded 
hour began. I felt that the barriers were 
down. Things that I had wanted to say to 
her for years now became possible and I gave 
myself free rein. As I warmed to my work I 
believe I had never enjoyed myself so thor- 
oughly and I saw that I was making an 
impression. 

When I pictured my future so desolate 
without her I could detect a pitying, almost 
tender expression in her young blue eyes. 



70 My Cro-wded Ho\ir 

Who could know as well as she all that I was 
going to lose? When I left I felt like the 
Irishman, who, when they asked him on his 
deathbed whether he repented, said, "Faith, 
why should I repint — I never missed an 
opportunity." I certainly had made the 
most of my great opportunity. But my self- 
congratulation was short-lived. A couple of 
days after I received the shock of my life, 
a note from her saying that she knew I would 
be interested to hear that she and Donald had 
quarrelled and their engagement was broken 
off. This was bad enough, but the feminine 
postscript in which she said without any 
apparent connection with the body of the 
letter, " P.S. It seemed to me I never really 
understood you until the other afternoon," 
was a finisher. 

It was another illustration of the eternal 
truth of the old saying, " You cannot dance 
without paying the Piper," and I kept pay- 
ing the Piper on the installment plan for 
miserable days. It was not possible that I 



My Cro^wded Hovir 71 

had been the cause — was to blame. No, 
but that damning postscript, "I never really- 
understood you until the other afternoon," 
and so I went over and over it all, pros and 
cons, trying to extract such miserable comfort 
as I could but with scant success, I never 
was so thoroughly upset in my life but after 
a wretched week another letter came which 
put me out of my misery — "The quarrel was 
all a mistake, a little temporary misunder- 
standing, and she and Donald were to be mar- 
ried right after New Year's." It was not 
until I had enjoyed my feeling of relief to 
the full, and then thought it all calmly over, 
that I began to realize how thoroughly the 
joke was on me both coming and going, and 
this realization was confirmed by the course 
of after events. Her marriage proved an 
ideally happy one. 



VI 

ALUMNI RECEPTION 



73 



VI 

ALUMNI RECEPTION 

IF I were here in an individual capacity, 
after the more than complimentary re- 
marks of your Chairman, all you would see 
of me would be my coat-tails ; but I have the 
honor to be representing the Upper Eighties, 
and with my Society behind me, I am going to 
stand by the talking machine, be it the Victor 
or the Vanquished. 

The name of our Society, the Upper Eighties, 
may sound a little like a real estate proposition 
in a thriving section of our great city, but I 
can assure you that although we were only 
brought to the attention of the public, only 
organized last March, there is nothing specu- 
lative about us. We are to-day an absolute 
established success. If you take any stock 

75 



76 ^1-uznni Reception 

in us you can be perfectly certain of one thing 
— you will find no water there or thereabouts. 

After the Dinner of the Older Graduates 
this winter I was severely taken to task by one 
of their most prominent members for having 
addressed them as "old" graduates instead 
of "older" graduates. This is the first public 
opportunity I have had to set myself straight 
and I want to say now, in one respect at least, 
they are like the rose, — whether you call them 
older graduates or by any other name, they 're 
a sweet smelling old bimch, with something of 
dewiness, of freshness, that is almost super- 
natural when you consider the days, the years, 
the decades that they have been a source 
of delight, of pride to us younger graduates. 
Mr. Benedict, '74, is their prize exhibit, their 
champion rose, but there are plenty of others 
right in his class. There, Ben Lawrence, is 
that apology ample, or will I have to take 
another try at it? 

What shall I say of the Early Eighties and 
Jim Livingston? Jim is that Joshua who, 



^lumrxi Reception 77 

when the siin of Columbia enthusiasm was 
setting fast, not only bade it stand still but 
to return to noonday warmth and brilliancy. 
It recognized its master's voice and has 
stayed fixed there ever since. 

Mighty are the Early Eighties and Jim 
Livingston has been their prophet. I have 
said what I am saying several times before 
and am going to keep on saying it every 
chance I get. Every Colimibia man owes a 
deep debt of gratitude to the Early Eighties 
and Jim Livingston and that little band — 
you know them all — Jerry Romaine, George 
Renault, George Barnes, Ambrose Henry, 
Billy Demorest, Bob Arrowsmith, and the 
rest of them who have done so much to make 
the Early Eighties what they are; and the 
mantle of Jim's leadership has fallen on most 
worthy shoulders. There is no one whom 
Columbia men have cause to honor more than 
Dr. Reginald H. Sayre, the present President 
of the Early Eighties. 

The informality, the hominess, the at- 



78 A.l\imni Reception 

hominess, of this reception is most pleasant. 
On several occasions lately I have been obliged 
to tune my lyre to quite lofty strains, but 
between ourselves, I think the old instrument 
never sounds quite so well as when it is playing 
ragtime like to-night. 

By the way, it is curious how harmoniously 
I get along with that lyre. When the Spanish 
explorer, Cortez, and his knights invaded 
America they brought with them their trained 
chargers, only less terrible in battle than the 
knights themselves. The poor Mexicans who 
tried to oppose them, with their weapons 
tipped with glass, thought for a time the steel- 
clad man and horse were one — some strange, 
new, terrible beast. 

So it is with me and my lyre. From 
previous training and natural adaptability 
we work together so perfectly that it is almost 
impossible to separate man and instrtiment. 
You covdd easily fancy them a complete 
whole, a liar of some strange design and 
even more gigantic proportions than those 



A.luxnni Reception 79 

generally encountered in our everyday 
life. 

I am a robust optimist on Columbia. I 
have been saying this so much lately that I 
almost feel like the barker who stands outside 
the big circus tent and tells the people the 
wonders within, and I love the part. There 
has been too much of cavil, of criticism at 
Morningside. The world, as you know, is 
prone to take us at our own valuation. We 
have a good thing, a great thing there, and I 
hold it the bounden duty of every Columbia 
man to say so in no uncertain tone on every 
occasion, fitting or otherwise; and in our 
crowing, gentlemen, unlike the precedent 
established by Mr. Charles Frohman, who 
gave the part to a woman, Maude Adams, we 
want men to play the r61e of Chantecler. 

Speaking for the Society of the Upper 
Eighties, we thank you most heartily for your 
hospitality. 



VII 

MY lady's powder-box 



8l 



VII 

MY lady's powder-box 

QHE was a beautiful girl, certainly the 
most beautiful girl I have ever known, 
and probably as beautiful a girl as I have ever 
seen. Rather tall, with a slim but well rounded 
figure, with a something peculiarly her own 
of grace and elegance in all her movements, 
golden brown hair with burnished copper 
lights in it, eyes of a most wonderful blue 
and very expressive, the most aristocratic 
little nose you ever saw, but with nothing of 
severity about it, and the most beautiful pair 
of hands, with long, tapering, artistic fingers, 
she was about as perfect as a girl could be. 
Her nose was one of the most characteristic 
of her points. My grandfather was a singu- 
larly handsome man (accidents will happen 

83 



84 My Lady's Po-wder-Dox 

in the best regulated families), with rarely- 
perfect featiires, and I used to tell her that her 
nose always reminded me of a marble bust 
we had of him in our library. I have forgotten 
to mention her complexion, which was most 
wonderful in the delicacy and clearness of its 
coloring. 

As was perfectly natural with so much 
beauty, she was very fond of having her 
photograph taken. I will never forget one 
of them. Some photographer, appreciating 
her possibilities, took her in the same pose as 
one of the famous pictures of Emma Eames. 
In low-cut dress with her beautiful hair in two 
great braids, probably a bit artfully flattened 
for photographic purposes, thrown over her 
shoulders across her breast, she made the 
Emma Eames picture look like thirty cents. 
I speak of this photograph very feelingly as 
for years it was one of my proudest possessions. 

She was a curiously gifted girl and had far 
more than her beauty, remarkable as that was. 
In fact, to use the language which the baseball 



My Lady's Po-wder-Dox 85 

fan appli js to his favorite pitcher, she had 
ever5rthing — Speed, Curves, and Control. 
Very intelhgent, with a fine sense of humor, 
healthy as a fish, fond of all sport, a fine 
swimmer and good tennis player — although she 
did all such things rather with the air of their 
being a necessary accomplishment of My Lady, 
never losing for an instant even in the midst 
of them her peculiarly personal attributes of 
daintiness and a little something which showed 
her innate fondness for ease and luxury, one 
of her strongest characteristics. Her sense of 
humor was really very remarkable, most un- 
commonly so for a woman. I shall never for- 
get one little thing she said to me. I lived at 
that time in Fortieth Street. Right opposite 
in Forty-second Street was a well-known book- 
seller named F. E. Grant. He was a great be- 
liever in advertising of a personal nature and 
in everything he sent out, and he sent a lot all 
over that section, he would print in big red 
letters at the top, "When calling, please ask 
to see Mr. Grant." One day Claire and I 



86 My Lady's Po-wder-Box 

were bicycling; in those days every one had a 
wheel. As we went up Riverside Drive past 
Grant's Tomb, she turned to me and said, 
"Ralph, do you know what would be a good 
inscription to put over the tomb?" "No, 
Claire, what?" "When calling please ask to 
see Mr. Grant." 

It is curious how few really good things you 
yourself hear said and what a lasting impres- 
sion they make on you. Claire's remark 
has been a joy to me for all these years. 
Digressing a moment, the best thing I myself 
ever heard was gotten off by the late Frank R. 
Stockton at my mother's dinner table. He 
was an old family friend of ours and it was a 
little dinner happening to fall on St. Valen- 
tine's Eve. Among the sweets was a decora- 
tion appropriate for the day — ^five hearts 
hanging by different colored ribbons. On 
each one was a letter, A-M-0-U-R. Mr. 
Stockton held them for a moment in his 
hand, dangling them by their bright ribbons. 
"That 's rather a sad commentary on nine- 



My Lady's Po-wder-Box 87 

teenth-century affection," he said; "it talies 
five Hearts to make one Love. " 

But to get back to my little story. 

As was to be expected, she had countless 
admirers and a number of devoted suitors. 
Although I had known her since she was six- 
teen and we shared every taste in common, 
it was only by the most strenuous efforts that 
I kept a place near the top of the list, but I 
think I can say with becoming modesty that 
I did so for a nimiber of years. Here, how- 
ever, was an instance where the old saying, 
"There 's plenty of room at the top, " did not 
apply at all. Even there each one of us felt 
in daily mortal peril of being crowded out. 
She had one suitor who always stood out with 
us all as a special menace. He was not only 
an attractive man but wealthy, and wealth 
worked to its full capacity must ever be 
a power, especially where luxurious young 
women are concerned. I often joked her 
about her millionaire Possibility or rather 
Probability. 



88 My Lady's Pcwder-Box 

At about this period from a lost Philopena 
or some other nonsense I owed her a little 
present and asked her what she would like to 
have. She said, "Ralph, a friend of mine 
showed me the other day something new and 
very pretty — a heart-shaped silver powder- 
box. If you can find one I would like to have 
that." I told her if the city of New York 
contained it it would be hers. I always think 
a mere present without some little personal 
turn or excuse for giving it is stupid, and in the 
present case where she had suggested herself 
the nature of the gift, it was all the more 
necessary to add some touch of originality if 
I could. I cudgeled my brains and at last hit 
on an idea. We had one initial in common and 
I worked out a little monogram of our com- 
bined initials with an inscription, and then 
trotted off to Gorham's to see whether I could 
find the box she had described. They had 
the exact thing, very pretty and attractive 
indeed. I then took out my little piece of 
paper on which was the monogram and in- 



My Lady's Po"wder-Dox 89 

scription and asked the clerk whether he could 
put them on. He was the type that only- 
waiting behind such counters seems to breed — 
with that superciliousness, that over spick- 
and-span neatness, which is so characteristic 
of them all. He took the little pad with the 
monogram and read the inscription: 

"Those whom Silver Hath Joined Together, 
Let not Gold put Asimder. " 

He lifted his cold fish-like eyes and looked 
at me over his exaggeratedly high standing 
collar, but not a muscle of his face moved. 
"Sort of a joke, is n't it?" All of a sudden I 
felt very young and foolish. "Yes, sort of a 
one," I replied, as I mopped my forehead. 
"All right, " he said, "we can do it. " 

She was delighted with the box and tickled 
to death with the little inscription and I felt 
far more than repaid for my trouble. A 
short time after she told me she was going to 
visit the family of the millionaire Possibility 



90 My Lady's Po-wder-Dox 

for a week or so. I asked her a bit maliciously 
whether she was going to take the box along. 
"Why, yes, Ralph," she said, "of course; 
but I 've scratched it with a hairpin so it 's 
pretty hard to read. " 

I visited her the other day at her magnificent 
country home at Newport. With two beauti- 
ful children, jewels, Poiret gowns, half a dozen 
automobiles, etc., she possesses everything 
that devotion and great wealth can supply 
and the heart of woman desire. Ah, me! I 
wonder if she still has the little scratched 
powder-box. 



VIII 

THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT 



91 



VIII 

THE ARTISTIC TEMPERAMENT 

"COME one to see you, sir." "All right, 
show him in. " And he entered my of- 
fice, presenting a letter of introduction. It 
was from a very dear friend of mine and read 
as follows: "This will introduce to you Mr. 

, a brother author, and a man who has been 

on the staff of the New York for a good 

many years. He has been ill and he needs a 
little help just now which I wish I could give 
him. Perhaps you will let him talk to you and 
explain his needs. I shall deeply appreciate 
it if you will listen. " 

I turned and looked him over. He was a 
man of fifty-five or sixty, quite well dressed 
and evidently a gentleman, with something in 
his appearance and accent distinguishing him 

93 



94 THe -Artistic Temperament 

from an American, probably an Englishman or 
Irishman. "Well, what can I do for you?" 
I said. He went on to give me his story, 
speaking in a very pleasant cultivated voice 
and displaying an unusual and taking per- 
sonality, with something attractive and whim- 
sical in the way he put things. 

It seems he had been doing occasional work 
for one of the big New York papers, not regu- 
larly on the staff, but a sort of a free-lance, 
apparently mostly in the line of little hiimor- 
ous poems. He showed me a specimen or 
two with some press notices, most flattering. 
I had just been going through this sort of thing 
myself with my first book recently published 
and could not help laughing inwardly; he 
interspersed his remarks with the press notices, 
etc., in so precisely the same way I could see 
I had been inflicting myself on my friends. 
I tried to slide in edgewise a few things about 
my book but it was no use, and this utter lack 
of diplomacy on his part had its appeal. He 
was absolutely hard-up, he went on to say, — 



THe Artistic Temperament 95 

there was little money in this sort of work, 
whatever the glory might be, — and had con- 
ceived the idea of going on the lecture platform 
and in some way had connected with a proposi- 
tion to start the project in Oklahoma, but 
had to raise the money to get there. Two old 
friends of his, prominent business men whose 
names he gave me, had agreed, he said, to give 
him twenty-five dollars apiece if he could raise 
the balance, but so far he had had no success. 
Most of his friends were among newspaper 
men and, "As you know, Mr. Morgan," he 
remarked, ''newspaper men never have any 
ready money. " I listened patiently and then 
said to him, "This is all very well, but why 
should you come to me, an entire stranger?" 
"Bless me," he replied, "if I know, or why 

Mrs. should have sent me. " There was 

something engaging about his frankness and 
I began to waver, although my first instinct 
was to turn the proposition down flatly. It is 
a general rule with very few exceptions that 
where a man comes to a person on whom he has 



96 THe Artistic Temperament 

no possible claim for money, it means that 
he has exhausted the patience of his friends 
and is not worthy. I like every one else had 
had my experiences of this kind and have never 
been lucky enough as yet to stimible on the 
vmdoubted exceptions to the rule. 

I read my friend's letter over again. I had 
great confidence in her judgment and the tone 
of it was such that she evidently thought that 
he deserved being helped. I was seized by 
a sudden impulse. "All right," I said. "You 
say that by squeezing things right down, if 
you can raise one hundred dollars you can 
get there. I '11 let you have fifty dollars, 
providing you can raise the other fifty dollars. " 
I dictated a little line saying, "To sum up the 
result of our interview, I hereby agree to loan 
you $50.00 towards the $100.00 which you say 
you need to enable you to get to Oklahoma 
to fill the lecture engagement offered, pro- 
vided you can get the other $50.00 from a 
friend or friends," and signed it on my busi- 
ness paper. I thought this would be a help 



XKe Artistic Xemperament 97 

to him in raising the balance, and as long as 
I was going to do it, thought it best not to 
do it by halves. He was delighted and most 
profuse in his thanks, saying he would be back 
the following day or the day after at the latest. 
Sure enough, two days later he turned up 
again in high spirits. He blew in breezily 
with the salutation, "How is the great Mr. 
Morgan to-day?" I let this sally pass un- 
noticed and asked him, " What luck? " "Fine," 
he said, and showed me three letters each 
agreeing to let him have $10.00. "That 
makes $80.00 but I think by squeezing I can 
do it all on $100.00 and can make up the ba- 
lance myself. " "Do it on $100.00? " I inter- 
jected. " Make up the balance? What about 
the men who promised to give you $25.00 each, 
have they gone back on their word ? " " Why, 
bless my soul, no, I had to have my teeth 
fixed and that took $35.00. " I laughed aloud. 
Here was the artistic temperament with a 
vengeance. "What are you going to do with 
the $50.00 I gave you, get a hair-cut?" He 



98 THe -Artistic Temperament 

grinned appreciatively, murmured once more 
that he would always be grateful for my kind- 
ness, and gayly betook himself off. Shall I 
ever see him again? " I hae ma doots. " 



IXI 

ANNAPOLIS CELEBRATION 



99 



ixr 

annapolis celebration 

Gentlemen of the Varsity Crew: 

Speaking for the alumni who saw you from 
the Commodore Sattirday, I can tell you we 
think you are hot sttiff. The three hundred 
experts and the half a dozen non-experts, 
who got aboard by mistake, agree absolutely 
in this. Seriously, we thought we had never 
seen a crew row so well at this time of the 
year. It was not only the splendid leg-drive, 
slow, easy recover, and good blade work, 
which Dr. Peet has spoken so well of, but it 
was an indescribable something of litheness, of 
latent power, of fire and dash, that appealed 
to us. 

Perhaps the policy of saying this in the 
middle of the season with the final test yet to 

lOI 



I02 Annapolis Celebration 

come may be questioned, but truth like mur- 
der will out, and much of this must, of course, 
be already known to you. The logic of events 
is strong and it was writ so that you who 
rowed so well could read — on the backs of 
Annapolis, the conqueror of Pennsylvania 
and Syracuse, and by some miracle of optics, 
you could never see it so clearly as when you 
crossed the finish line with the crack navy 
crew over three lengths away. 

You crew men give a great deal to the 
college. There are months of hard work, 
much of it drudgery with self-denial on every 
side, but take it from me, you are and will be 
well repaid. You know already the glorious 
exhilaration which comes when after all the 
preparation you are put to the test and find 
that you are all there and a well -deserved 
victory is yours. And how you respect your 
antagonist who has made you do your damned- 
est to win, "The stern joy that warriors feel 
at foemen worthy of their steel," We are 
but human and perhaps would not love them 



Annapolis Celebration 103 

quite so like brothers if the event had not 
proved that we were just a bit the better men. 
This is something of your reward now but it 
will come to you the rest of your life. Nothing 
so keeps alive your interest in college matters 
and your Alma Mater as to have given her your 
best when you were there, to have won for her 
splendid victories, and even to have suffered 
for her defeats, hardly less splendid, when 
you did your part like men. I happened to be 
at a luncheon of a very important Coltimbia 
Alumni Committee the other day where 
Billie Demorest spoke of this; how in after 
life almost every time you found a man who 
was working hard and doing things for his 
college, you found an old athlete. Billie, 
himself, is a glorious exception and there are 
I am glad to say others. The man who does 
his best to help along, who manages, who 
organizes, and even the ardent and devoted 
rooter, is worthy of his hire as well. 

I have spoken of what you feel, but you must 
know how you make us old alumni feel when 



104 i\nnapolis Celebration 

you win such a victory as Annapolis. I was 
at New Haven that Saturday and came down 
with an old Cornell friend, Mr. Berry. We 
had both been officials at the Yale-Harvard 
meet. We could get no news until we reached 
New York, but when I saw the extra and 
that Columbia had beaten Annapolis by over 
three lengths, I gave a whoop, and when I saw 
that Pennsylvania had beaten Yale eight 
lengths, I whooped again, and Berry, like the 
good sport he is, whooped with me both times. 
His reason was nothing like so strong, but as 
a Cornell man he wanted the supremacy of 
Poughkeepsie above New London to be es- 
tablished, and the day was all to the good. 
I spoke at this time to him of how we admired 
the beautiful form of the Cornell crews. He 
said, and you can imagine how delighted I was 
to hear it, that that was all right, but up at 
Ithaca they thought no crews could row better 
than the Columbia crews as coached by Jim 
Rice, and I believe he meant it. 

But let 's turn now to Poughkeepsie, which 



>\nnapolis Celebration 105 

is, of course, what you are all working for. 
The first half of yotu* season has been a glorious 
success, but it is Poughkeepsie which really 
counts. Those of you who were at the Rowing 
Mass Meeting in February know what I think 
of the Poughkeepsie Regatta, what the win- 
ning of it means. Speaking with my most 
deliberate judgment, I said then and I say 
now, it is the greatest sporting event in the 
world. What the English Derby is to horse 
racing, the Poughkeepsie Regatta is to ama- 
teur sport. It is the blue ribbon event. 
This statement will bear the closest analysis — 
in football you only have a contest between 
two teams, in baseball it is the same, and while 
a great track meet like the IntercoUegiates is 
most interesting, you cannot get that in- 
tensity, that focalized interest, you get in the 
other three forms of athletics. When it comes 
to rowing, the Poughkeepsie Regatta is in a 
class by itself. The Harvard- Yale race and the 
Oxford-Cambridge race are big contests, but 
between only two crews, which often resolve 



io6 i\n]:iapolis Celebration 



themselves almost from the start into a pro- 
cession, and while the Grand Challenge Race 
at the English Henley is probably considered 
the greatest event in the world, the distance is 
only I mile, 550 yards, and of necessity it is 
a wild spiirt, the crews sprinting at 40 and 
upwards with none of the beautifiil pace and 
swing of a four-mile crew. Moreover, it is 
rowed in heats with only two crews in a heat. 
The Varsity Race at Poughkeepsie with its 
six crews, and the class of America among 
those crews, stands alone. 

Let us look ahead twenty years. It is some 
celebration, some dinner, such as the three 
societies had Saturday at Arrow Head Inn. 
Presiding is that ornament of the Bench whose 
career has been a source of pride to all Col- 
umbia men, with the same clear blue eye and 
something of decision and firmness about his 
mouth we have always known, but his blond 
head is now all silver. It is Judge Bogue, 
our old friend Morton Bogue. He rises and 
says, "No rowing celebration would be com- 



Annapolis Celebration 107 

plete without speaking of the Columbia vic- 
tory at Poughkeepsie of 191 1, and we are 
fortunate enough to have with us to-night 
several of that crew." Phillips or Downing, or 
whoever of you are there, — and I hope every 
one of you will be, — will get up and we will 
cheer you to the echo, and you will be glad you 
have lived and are alive, and we will absolutely 
agree with you in both sentiments and — 
some one shake me hard, I 'm dreaming; but I 
believe you can and will make the first part of 
the dream come true at Poughkeepsie on 
Jime 27th, and if you do, we guarantee 
absolutely that the rest will follow in due 
course, even to Bogue's becoming a judge. 



TRYING IT ON A NEW SPECIES OF DOG 



109 



x: 

TRYING IT ON A NEW SPECIES OF DOG 

T WAS on my way uptown the other afternoon, 
standing, as is my custom, on the back 
platform of the elevated car to get a little air 
and sun. I had with me several copies of a 
little book of mine just published, the first 
I had ever written. It had a blue and white 
paper slip cover with large letters and I 
happened to place them alongside of me on the 
platform with the lettering up. 

About Bleecker Street four or five Postal 
Telegraph messenger boys got on and stayed 
out on the platform where I was standing. 
They were doing some rough skylarking, as 
such boys will, and once or twice came very 
close to me. Suddenly one of them noticed 
the little pile of books. I saw him leaning 

III 



112 Trying It on a Ne-w Species of Do^ 

over trying to read the lettering on the paper 
cover of my new hobby. I am a great beHever 
in trying anything of this kind on as many 
classes of people as you can conveniently get 
at, and it suggested itself to me that here was 
an unusual and most interesting species of dog 
right handy. I said to the boy nearest me, 
" Would you like to look at the book? " And 
I took it up in my hand and showed it to him. 
They all gathered around. The frontispiece 
was a pictvire of me in golf knickers. " Gee ! " 
he said, "it 's him," and they all crowded over. 
I saw I had my audience with me from the 
start. I told them that I had written it 
myself, showed one of the illustrations, a 
coat-of-arms in four colors, which was very 
striking and pretty, and the title of an article 
on Mike Murphy — College Trainer, and asked 
them whether they had heard of Mike. They 
all had and were very much interested and 
wanted to know how much the book sold for. 
I said, "A dollar and a quarter." Luckily, 
perhaps, they did n't catch the dollar part but 



Trying It on a Ne-w Species of Do^ 113 

said it looked like a mighty good book and 
well worth a quarter. 

Just as the train was drawing up to 
Eighteenth Street, the station at which I was 
going to get out, I was seized with an impulse. 
The leader was a bright little fellow who looked 
like an Italian. I asked him whether he could 
read. He replied, he certainly could. I told 
him he must show me and made him read the 
title-page, which he did very well. My idea 
was to give him one of the copies, but I realized 
that if he appeared with a handsome little 
book, such as it was, in his possession, they 
would think he had picked it up somewhere 
or perhaps even stolen it. As the train was 
already slacking its speed I did n't have time 
to ask his name but pulled out my stylographic 
pen and taking a look at his cap, said, "Your 
number is 2809?" "Yes, sir," he answered, 
"2809, " and I hastily scrawled on the fly-leaf, 
"To my friend. No. 2809," and shoved the 
book in his hand, just managing to get out as 
the guard was slamming the gate. I turned 



114 Trying It on a Ne-w Species of Do^ 

around and took one last look on my way to 
the elevated stairs. There was my little book 
entirely surrounded by boys, each one shout- 
ing at the top of his voice. 



XI 

OUTING OF THE THREE SOCIETIES 



"5 



XI 

OUTING OF THE THREE SOCIETIES 

OPRING is in the air and this is no time 
for long dinners or set speeches. Be- 
sides, I hardly consider that I am called on in 
my official capacity as President of the Upper 
Eighties. The jeweled baton of my leader- 
ship reposes securely in the safe and the only 
one who knows the combination, the office 
boy, went this afternoon to the ball game to 
see the Giants. 

Moreover, I had supposed, and George 
Renault will bear me out, that there was to 
be nothing serious, nothing formal about this 
occasion. Life, to be sure, is always more 
or less of a gamble, but these few hours, the 
spring outing of our three Societies, were to be 

"7 



ii8 Oxatin^ of tKe XKree Societies 

but a gambol on the green, with the only- 
stakes those furnished by oiir genial host, 
Ben Riley. 

The fact that your Committee instead of 
ordering steak has seen fit to provide chicken 
has caused this sentiment, although perfect 
in every detail, to be technically classed as 
damaged, and no unreasonable offer will be 
refused. 

This is not the first time that the question of 
a selection of diet has been fraught with the 
gravest consequences. It is related of Marie 
Antoinette that when they told her that the 
people of Paris were crying for bread, she 
replied, " Why don't they eat cake? " And this 
remark, as illustrating her essential frivolity 
and lack of comprehension of the true con- 
dition of her subjects, did more than any one 
thing to cause her to lose her head. As a 
matter of fact, how many times has a failure 
to understand the true theory of breadstuffs 
caused a woman not only to lose her head but 
her husband as well. Too much saleratus or 



0\itin^ of tKe TKree Societies 119 

half-baked biscuits have ruined many a 
happy home. 

Hold hard — back water! Here I am going 
on almost like Byron's lady in Don Juan, 
who, saying she 'd ne'er consent, consented. 
In a minute more you 'd have me making a 
speech. Start me off these days and I seem 
to get spouting like an old town pump, but 
I was going to hold myself sternly in check 
to-night. 

I had intended to conclude without setting 
off any red fire, without even attempting, as is 
proper, to perorate with a little blaze, but how 
can I? This is Regatta Day and the splendid 
victory of otir Varsity at Annapolis with its 
happy augury for Poughkeepsie is fresh in all 
our minds . It was a magnificent triumph both 
for the crew and for the Colimibia stroke as 
taught by Jim Rice. Rice is not only a great 
coach — there is no better in America — ^but he 
has a remarkable gift of terse expression. I 
will never forget a speech he made at a row- 
ing mass meeting this winter. There had 



120 Ovitin^ of tKe TKree Societies 

been a lot of hot air in which Kitty Morgan, 
myself, and that past master of the radiator, 
the Chairman, Jim Livingston, played a 
prominent part, and great enthusiasm, espe- 
cially when Rice's name was mentioned. You 
know he is a Canadian, and when he was 
called on this is what he said: "Gentle- 
men, I had thought of going to the Thou- 
sand Islands for a vacation, spending a 
week on each island, but I '11 stay." That 
was all, but I don't think I ever heard a 
speech which expressed so much in as few 
words. 

I was reminded of this by the instructions 
which they say he gave our crew just before 
the start at Annapolis. They sum up abso- 
lutely the best theory of rowing a match race 
between two crews. "Keep the stroke up 
till you get ahead of them, then lengthen 
out and watch them. When they sprint 
you sprint, and when they don't sprint, 
you sprint anyhow." It was stern stuff 
and with such a crew as the Navy not 



Outing of tHe TKree Societies 121 

easy to follow, but we have an eight that 
proved themselves worthy of such a coach 
and gloriously able to carry out such a 
program. 



XII 

THE TERRIBLE SWEDE 



1*3 



XII 

THE TERRIBLE SWEDE 

TT was my first visit to a very attractive inn 
at the east end of Long Island. I only 
knew one or two people there, although I had 
many old friends among the cottagers, and 
was naturally curious to see with whom I was 
going to spend three or four weeks in the more 
or less intimacy which must prevail at such 
summer resorts. My cursory inspection the 
night of my arrival proved rather disappoint- 
ing, but the next morning I noticed a very 
attractive woman, who, although she seemed 
to know almost every one, seemed to prefer 
to sit by herself much of the time. I inquired 
who she was and was told, "That 's Miss 
Anderson, Christine Anderson, the actress." 

I knew her work well and was surprised that 

125 



126 THe Terrible S-wede 

I had not recognized her. She had made 
several big hits and was rightly considered 
very exceptional in her combination of great 
artistic ability with a very unusual tempera- 
ment, a true artist to her finger tips. 

The following day I missed her. I learned 
afterwards she had been off on some little trip 
but she came back that evening. I took the 
usual steps to secure an introduction, although 
in this case they happened to prove very 
amusing. I asked a young man there whom 
I had known very casually, although for a 
number of years, whether he knew Miss 
Anderson. He said he did. I said, "Then 
I want you to introduce me. " He answered, 
"Why, I 'm not surewhether it's Mrs. or Miss." 
"I know it is Miss, but what difference does 
that make anyhow?" He said, "You don't 
mean now?" It was about ten o'clock at 
night and she was in the main hallway of the 
inn. I said, "Why not now — the sooner the 
better; come ahead." He saw further hold- 
ing back was useless and nervously led me 



XHe Terrible S-wede 127 

forward. "Miss Anderson, I want to present 
to you my very old and dear friend, Mr. 
Morgan. I will be right back. " With a little 
embarrassed laugh he left us and that was the 
last we saw of him that evening. 

I found her far more attractive even than 
I expected, which is saying a good deal. Her 
ability and artistic temperament I was quite 
prepared for, but her remarkable sense of hu- 
mor, with a certain cheery winsomeness and 
wholesomeness, was a delightful and surprising 
revelation. 

The following evening was a beautiful 
starlight night and we were walking up and 
down the porch. She stopped and said, 
*' That's Jupiter." "Jupiter, what's Jupi- 
ter?" "Why the star, that star up there." 
"Yes, perhaps it is, but why Jupiter par- 
ticularly?" "He's looking at it now." I 
could n't imagine quite what I was up against 
but saw there was a little something at least 
of seriousness back of the laugh in her eyes. 
"Who 's *He' and what 'sail this nonsense?" 



128 XHe Terrible S"wede 

"He's a Hungarian, a very charming Hun- 
garian, and I received this postal from him 
to-day." She showed me a foreign picture 
postal with a few lines scrawled on it along- 
side the address, winding up, "I saw the Star 
last night." It was all very interesting, of 
course, but I was forced to tell her that the 
idea of her looking at a star with some other 
foreign idiot doing it at the same time at cer- 
tain fixed intervals could not be expected to 
arouse feelings of wild exultation in my manly 
breast. She laughed and said that I must n't 
take it too seriously as he was married and his 
wife was a great friend of hers. Although I 
had to admit that this was a mitigating cir- 
cumstance, I assured her that it was not 
absolutely a safe foundation to rest on, as 
history had proved in many such cases. She 
went on to tell me that he was a very inter- 
esting foreigner whom she had met when in 
Bad Wilddungen a year ago. He had the 
temperament and natural instinct for doing 
charming little things to please women in 



TKe Terrible S^wede 129 

which such foreigners were far ahead of the 
Americans. He used for instance to meet her 
every morning at the Kiirsall with a flower 
which he would present with his foreign 
courtly bow. 

It was a pretty little story and veiy charm- 
ingly told, but I found that even at this early 
date my mood was hardly such as to permit 
me to do it full justice. 

But I am forgetting that only a favored few 
of you at the most are fortunate enough to 
know Miss Christine Anderson. I am dis- 
playing almost the reluctance of my introduc- 
ing young friend. Ring up the curtain, another 
Star, not Jupiter this time, is ready to make 
her formal entrance. 

She had golden brown hair brushed so close 
and sleekly that it had a peculiar sheen, the 
absolute trimness only relieved by a few curly 
locks which seemed to force themselves loose 
around her forehead. Wonderfully expressive 
big eyes which most people, probably deceived 
by her general coloring, thought were blue, 



130 TKe Terrible S"wede 

but there was not a particle of blue in them, 
greens and grays, with green as the prevailing 
tint. She had a trick at times of making them 
seem almost round like a child's. A good- 
sized nose (to me a small nose either on a man 
or woman always suggests something of insig- 
nificance), most expressive in its irregularity. 
What does Victor Hugo say of Cosette's nose? 
— "A true Parisian nose, the despair of painters 
and the delight of poets." Her mouth was 
her most striking feature, the most attrac- 
tive mouth I think I have ever seen. A good, 
big mouth, full, generous lips, with an unusual 
warmth of red in them, and with the upper lip 
coming to almost a little pendant point, which 
was quite noticeable in profile. When smiling 
they disclosed a mouthful of splendid, white, 
strong, irregular teeth. It is curious what 
an added attractiveness a little irregularity 
in teeth gives. 

I shall never forget how she looked standing 
in the front line of the suffragettes around the 
speaker's platform, a purple and white band 



XKe Terrible S^wede 131 

with its "Votes For Women" worn conspic- 
uously across her shoulder, in a close, low, 
pointed black straw hat (a Supreme Court 
Judge who stood alongside of me said she 
looked like a Monsignor); as she caught my 
eye, all smiles and curves, with pitfalls for the 
unwary or wary — for even they would have 
stood precious little chance — she addeda terror 
heretofore totally imsuspected to the " Cause. " 
We had many interests in common and with 
the close association of such country life where 
every one is practically doing the same thing 
at the same time, we became great friends 
immediately. I had written a little book, my 
first offense, that spring and was naturally 
very proud of it. I gave her a copy to read. 
When she returned it she was most charming 
in her gracious appreciation. I wrote on the 
fly-leaf, "To the Terrible Swede, with the 
Compliments of the Author," and handed it 
back to her. ' ' The Terrible Swede, how awful, 
how terrible!" This was a favorite exclama- 
tion of hers, but accompanied as it was by a 



132 XKe Terrible S^wede 

rounding of the eyes and a little uplifting of the 
brows, with a something foreign of intonation, 
not accent, in her glorious voice, — she had a 
beautiful full low voice, — it sounded entirely 
different from any other " awful " or " terrible " 
you ever dreamed of. 

She was very fond of wearing pink in the 
mornings . I n this , with her creamy white skin , 
and an indefinable something which for want 
of a better word I can only call luster, I told 
her once that she reminded me of Thackeray's 
story, "The Great Pink Pearl." It was an 
apt comparison. 

But with all her varied attractions:, the more I 
knew of her, her winsomeness and sunnj^ whole- 
someness, which I have spoken of above, stood 
out as her most remarkable characteristics. 
They reminded me of the story of Emerson's 
going through a Boston graveyard. There 
were epitaphs of all kinds — ^beloved wives, 
deeply mourned wives, faithfiil and deserving 
wives, etc., but finally on a modest little 
tombstone in an obscure corner he read, "And 



THe Terrible S-wede 133 

She Was So Pleasant," and he said it meant 
more to him than all the rest put together. 
I told her if I were unlucky enough to be alive 
at the time her inscription was going to read, 
"And She Was So Pleasant." 

The days, so full of interest, of color, of 
warmth, flew by and she was to go. I was 
talking of it all to her and day-dreaming of 
what the future, the winter, had in store for 
us. She poked a little gentle fun at me, said 
it had been the moonlight, the close com- 
panionship of the country life, I would see 
how different the city would make it seem. I 
laughed the idea to scorn. "The city! — what 
possible difference could a few millions of 
people more or less make to us? New York! 
We would turn it into fields again, Elysian 
Fields; she 'd see, she *d see." 

And so she went, went as conquerors go, 
leaving utter devastation and desolation be- 
hind her. My friend, the Judge, in wishing 
me good-by a couple of days later, said, 
" Mr. Morgan, I hope the best of your vacation 



DEC 19 1913 
134 TKe Terrible S"wede 

is to come." ''No, Judge," I replied, "it 
has come and gone — went on the 3.28 Wednes- 
day." He laughed. " What a charming wo- 
man Miss Anderson was, and what a beautiful 
voice!" 

And I had only looked for a peaceful three 
weeks in the open air. Ah! Life, Life, how 
Bewildering, how Ever Changing are thy 
Possibilities! 



Ji Selection from the 
Catalogue of 

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 



Conkplete Catalo^u* mtntM 
on application 



The Man Who One Day a 
Year Would Go "Eelin'" 

By 
Charles Halsted Mapes 

/2.° Illustrated. $1.00 net. By mail, $1.10 

"Charles Halsted Mapes has written 'The Man Who One 
Day a Year Would Go Eelin',' a little volume containing a 
dozen papers inspired chiefly by college sports. Mr. Mapes 
recites personal experiences and has given his book a very 
striking note of individual interest. He writes of college 
football and baseball and in his final chapters, of racing. A 
chapter on Mike Murphy carries a tribute to the old and 
loyal trainer which will be appreciated wherever the story of 
college athletics is even partly known." — New York World. 

"The delightful manner in which Charles Halsted Mapes 
relates the incidents of college life and sport that have in- 
terested him justifies the publication of ' The Man Who 
One Day a Year Would Go Eelin'.' " — New York Sun. 

" Not only will college men and lovers of athletics find 
much entertainment in this little volume; but everybody 
who has a heart will be moved sentimentally and aroused 
to admiration by reading these sketches written by a man 
truly full of his subject. Where will one find a cleaner cut 
character sketch than the opening, which details the annual 
dinner, alone and in state, of a down-and-out college man 
who was a ' good sport ' ? The tribute to Mike Murphy is 
a real gem and a deserved one. The stories of this popular 
trainer are to the point and reveal the great athlete in his 
finest spirit and noblest character." — Philadelphia Record. 

"The opening sketch is a gem, the story of an old man 
who had fallen on distressful days, but once a year went to 
the Yale-Harvard football game. It will become a classic 
among college stories. Another sketch is an appreciation 
of Mike Murphy, the college athletic trainer, which will be 
enjoyed by the hundreds who have known him and his 
successful work." — Boston Times. 

G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York London 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

lllllii 

029 929 164 9 



